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Jun 4, 18

From DC to Hamilton: Why the State Can’t Play By Its Own Rules

Monday marked yet another blow to the US Attorney’s crusade against Trump protesters who took to the streets on January 20th, 2017. Facing a barrage of chemical weapons and violence police, over 200 people were captured inside a police ‘kettle’ and kept for hours without access to bathrooms, food, water, or medicine. Upon being arrested, some arrestees were sexually assaulted, and have in turn launched a law suit against the police.

Throughout the case, the State has also worked openly with, and used media and video footage from, a variety of Alt-Right, militia, and far-Right organizations and individuals. This includes a spokesperson for the police being caught giving names and addresses of an entire list of those arrested to the GotNews website, which is run by Alt-Right troll Chuck Johnson, a friend of Richard Spencer.

https://twitter.com/defendj20/status/999029382411898881

The stakes of the trial have been high, with defendants originally facing over 80 years in prison, largely on “conspiracy” charges, which argued that those who arrived (and stayed) at the demonstration wearing all black, who chanted the same chants, and who belonged to groups like the IWW, all were part of vast conspiracy to destroy property, of which, only 8 bank and corporate windows were vandalized.

But by late last year, the prosecutions case had begun to unravel. On December 21st, the first J20 trial group was found not guilty by a jury. This blow, along with increasing support on the street, continued call-in pressure campaigns, and growing media attention, then lead the prosecution to drop charges on a total of 129 defendants, claiming that they instead would focus on the remaining “core” so-called “organizers” and “breakers.”

But then came the second death blow to the case, which arrived a week ago, when the defense learned that the prosecution along with the far-Right media group, Project Veritas had hid massive amounts of footage and edits from the defense, violating the so-called ‘Brady’ rule, which demands that one side share with the other any evidence findings.

As Unicorn Riot wrote:

Last week DC Superior Court Chief Judge Robert Morin sanctioned the US Attorney’s Office for hiding up to 69 evidence recordings from defendants and making false statements to the court. Judge Morin told prosecutors they could no longer use undercover video taken of an inauguration protest planning meeting by the right-wing “entrapment” media group Project Veritas.

What lead prosecutor Jennifer Kerkhoff stated while leaving court, “We are in a crisis,” has turned out to be true. Last week, charges were dropped against another 10 defendants, and on Monday, three more defendants on trial had their charges dropped along with a single individual who had their charges completely dismissed inside a group of four.

As Unicorn Riot wrote:

While Webber’s acquittal was announced this morning, the other three current trial defendants have not received a verdict from the jury and still face sentences of up to 60 years in prison. The remaining defendants – Michael Basillas, Seth Cadman and Anthony Felice – are each accused of participating in property destruction during the anti-Trump protest march, although no witnesses have identified them.

The government’s case against Basillas, Cadman, and Felice relies entirely upon arguments made by prosecutors, who claim that each defendant’s appearance can be correlated with clothing details, such as zippers and sunglasses, in videos analyzed by DC Police Detective Greggory Pemberton. The alleged identification of the three protesters has been heavily contested by defense counsel, who described the alleged evidence as merely “blurry pictures of someone who is dressed similar to everyone else.”

So far, it remains to be seen what will happen with the remaining three defendants still on trial for property destruction as well as the rest of the dozens of J20 arrestees that still face trial. Mostly likely, trial blocks will continue to be dismissed, one by one, which will only drag out the process for as long as possible, which is a strategy used by the prosecution to get people to roll over on each other. Even still, it seems clear that the J20 case has been dealt a death blow, and defendants still have no desire to roll over on each other.

The Ramping Up of Repression in Everyday Life

The J20 trial is showing to many that the State is not a neutral or “democratic” institution. This is happening at a time when more and more people, especially millennials, are losing faith in capitalism and the State, and grassroots movements for autonomy are growing. Along with broad sweeping attacks on other social movements, from Black Lives Matter to the anti-pipeline Water Protectors, the State is clearly trying to criminalize the way people come together and resist their day to day conditions.

This criminalization has nothing to do with making the public safer, as we have seen the State give a free pass and a green light to white nationalists and the Alt-Right. Case in point, when police handed over the names of J20 defendants to white nationalists, they gave a clear signal for the far-Right to attack and harass them.

Moreover, just as repression of social movements has nothing to do with making America safer, so to does the ramping of repression, surveillance, spying, and police control have nothing to do with stopping crime, making our neighborhoods safer, and instead everything to do with social control. This combination of increased surveillance and police militarization also comes at a time when violent crime is dropping, while mass incarceration is growing as US law enforcement are killing upwards of 3.5 people per day.

In short, the increase of political and police repression has nothing to do with stopping threats to the public, and everything to do with increasing repression in the face of growing social and political unrest against the dominant order.

To find examples of this, we need only look to the Metro DC police department, one of who’s officers (with a history of police violence) wore a shirt celebrating police brutality to court during the trial. Others in the department have a history of nefarious activities such as selling weapons on the street. DC Police just in the last several months, have also been responsible for the killings of Jeffery Price, D’Quan Young, and the beating of Samuel Cooper and a young woman at the hands of Metro Transit police.

It is important that we keep all of this in mind; that there is no separation between the increase in targeted political repression and the increase in broad social clampdowns, as they both serve the same function.

The State Cannot Even Live Up to It’s Own Ideals

The J20 case shows that the State cannot live up to it’s own ideals when doing anything.

The State claimed that the black bloc was a threat to human life, yet it was the police and the State which did more to injure, destroy, assault, and break down human bodies than anyone with a hammer or spray paint.

The State claimed that there was a conspiracy at work, yet it was the State which successfully conspired with Project Veritas to keep information from the court for over a year and a half.

The State claims to offer a fair and speedy trial, yet for a year and a half it has hung charges over people’s heads in the hopes that people will crack and take deals instead. This has nothing to do with justice, and everything with State control.

What all this shows over and over again is that the State does not even believe in it’s own ideas of due process, democracy, and justice. Instead, the State views the world in terms of a question of force; what can it get away with smashing, and for how long?

Lessons for Other Social Movements

Currently, people are rotting in jail for years for participating in the Ferguson and Standing Rock uprisings. New laws are being created, further criminalizing pipeline protest and the blockading of freeways. Our comrades in Hamilton and across Canada face a trial in the wake of a militant anti-gentrification march.

While the J20 trial is far from over, we must ask what lessons we have learned over the past year and a half and how can we transfer these lessons to other movements and struggles. Moreover, we must begin the task of breaking down the barriers of geography, borders, and racial lines to find common ground and offer both mutual aid and solidarity.

If J20 has taught us anything, it is that repression is also an opportunity to get organized and build up our defensive forces. We did that through speaking tours, weeks and days of action, organizing support rallies, and fundraising.

We also fought tooth and nail to not only get our story out there, but also to keep our narrative front in center. This meant supporting all defendants as well as physical resistance in general. It also meant calling bullshit on the narratives presented by the State; and instead popularizing our own. Thus, the J20 defendants went from being a rather obscure case to instead becoming champions of resistance in the age of Trump.

The Path Ahead

While there currently appears to be a light at the end of the J20 tunnel, there is no reason that the future cases could not last until the end of the year. Part of the reason that the State has stretched these trials out so long is because they want to attack and drain our movement. Going forward, we need to think about ways of continuing to offer material and financial support, as well as strategies that will continue to help defendants get free.

But overall, the task is upon us to build bridges both with other movements, but also within broad sections of society that are facing repression; from those hit by Session’s renewed war on drugs, Muslim communities besieged by informants and wiretaps, those suffering in immigrant detention facilities, to those attempting to survive within Trump’s America.

The fight against repression, is a fight against the State. Let’s organize to win.

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